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China's starring role in the Philippines

HONG KONG — In the 1990s, Filipino actresses like Zsa Zsa Padilla and Cherry Pie Picache won legions of fans at home for their mestiza Eurasian looks, emphasizing the European. They starred in movies typically featuring high-born Hispanic characters, with Philippine dialogue peppered with Spanish phrases.

Padilla and Picache won best actress and best supporting actress prizes at the Metro Manila Film Festival on Jan. 6, heralding a remarkable and continuing cultural shift. Instead of smatterings of Spanish, mother tongue of Manila's old guard elite, in "Ako Legal Wife" (I Am the Legal Wife), they deliver lines in the Hokkien dialect, a language from Southern China's Fujian Province, ancestral home for most Filipino-Chinese. With careful makeup and costuming, Padilla and Picache emphasized their Asian features to believably portray Chinese women.

The picture, which did well at the local box office, is a formulaic slapstick comedy about a wealthy Chinese businessman, his wife and his mistresses. It is highly unlikely that "Ako Legal Wife" will resonate much beyond Filipino audiences, yet it is notable as part of a curious Chinese accent increasingly incorporating itself into Philippine pop culture.

"What you see is how we live," Roselle Monteverde-Teo, the producer of "Ako Legal Wife" and scion of the Filipino-Chinese Monteverde filmmaking dynasty, said in a telephone interview.

"Ako Legal Wife" is the first comedy and the most commercial of four unrelated stories that form the groundbreaking "Mano Po" movie series. Each installment highlights various aspects of the ethnic Chinese experience in the Philippines, from the desire that offspring marry within the race, to the kidnapping of wealthy Chinese, to - as in the case of "Ako Legal Wife" - the modern practice of concubinage.

"In the last 10 years, we have witnessed great progress in outward expressions of Filipino acceptance of Filipino-Chinese as part of Filipino society. The success of Chinese-themed films is one indicator," Aristotle Dy, a Filipino-Chinese Jesuit priest who runs the Chinese Studies Program at the Ateneo de Manila University, said in an interview by e-mail.

"It was Mother's idea to promote Filipino-Chinese culture," says Monteverde-Teo, 41, the California-educated daughter of Lily Yu Monteverde, the formidable founder of Regal Films who is universally known in the Philippine entertainment industry as "Mother." "Most 'Mano Pos' are based on her experiences and that of people she knows."

For the latest "Mano Po," named after a traditional Philippine gesture of respect for an older person, the Monteverdes enlisted the help of the established Filipino director Joel Lamangan. "He had a hard time," says Monteverde-Teo, who is married to a Singaporean. So she came to the set to explain the rituals, motivations and nuances of Chinese culture in the Philippines, which he did not understand.

Monteverde-Teo's paternal grandfather, who was also originally from Fujian, adopted the Hispanic last name in honor of a family who helped him when he arrived in the Philippines from China.

"Mother is very proud of 'the Mano Po' series," says the younger Monteverde, who runs the day-to-day operation at Regal Films while her parents oversee their other businesses which include real estate and coconut trading. Making movies brought the family prominence.

Lily Yu Monteverde, 65, was born in Manila where her father settled after leaving China. A film buff growing up, she skipped class at a conservative Catholic girl's college to follow around her movie idols.

In the 1970s, after years of buying movies for the family-owned cinemas and distributing iconic Japanese titles like "Godzilla" and "Ultraman" as well as Hollywood pictures, she branched out into producing local films.

Twenty years ago, when the Philippine film industry produced about 250 local movies annually, the Monteverdes produced about 50 films a year. By the end of 2005, fewer than three dozen Philippine films were released; Regal made 10, including "Ako Legal Wife."